(Editor’s Note:The entry below aboutGolf Digest‘s 100 Greatest Golf Courses was composed in early April. After it was written, we realized it contained more questions than answers, so we decided to queryGolf Digestdirectly. It took a little while for them to get back to us — completely understandable since it’s Masters month and staff is probably closing large summer issues. This post gave rise to the questions that we submitted via e-mail and which Jerry Tarde,Digest‘s editor-in-chief, answered in the above post.)
TheGolf Digest100 Greatest Golf Courses is superb fodder for discussion, but as an outsider — a non-designing, non-rating, non-single-digit, unindicted investment banker, I mean, uninvited, infrequent guest at 100 Greatest venues — my initial feelings are that the ranking is a HUGE abstraction.
First, let’s say what’s great about it. It’s a total tease, in a golf-porn sense. I have saved the lists over the years, thinking perhaps I might check off a meaningful number. And, like the vast majority of readers, I tick off the ones I’ve played, keeping a running total that usually peaks in the mid teens. From time to time, I’ll take a deeper look, to see which architects are ascendant, or which courses from the Ross-Tillinghast-McKenzie era are still numbered among this elite century club.
And, finally,Golf Digestinvented the franchise, maintained it, sustained it, guarded it and expanded it as any astute publisher would.
Having said that, it may be time for greater transparency. Before I get there, however, let me make the case why it is but an abstraction in the sense that it is practically impossible to rank the 100 best in a meaningful sense.
How could you possibly critique a 100 Greatest course if, as a rater, you haven’t played a reasonable sample of, say, the top 250? Okay, it’s aggregate scores in seven areas that are collected from a pool of "more than 900 low-handicap golfers." Those scores are then averaged, right? Still, the composite 100 that emerge are different from the normal beauty pageant in that (in the case of the golf courses) all of the judges do not see all of the courses.
That doesn’t invalidate the finding but it does mean it’s less like a beauty pageant where all contestants are measured against each other by all judges, or a college football ranking where there are numerous common opponents and most, if not all, games are available on television. With a vast body of raters it’s far more substantial than, say, a high school national sports rankings where ranked teams have no common opponents and only a handful of people — college recruiters and two or three sportswriters — ever see enough of the top teams to make a qualified decision.
So I’m forced to wonder about the logistics: who the raters are and how often they play these venues and a representative segment of the next 150 on the list to assess a reasonable statistical segment or whatever you’d call it. How transparent is the process? It’s interesting that Ron Whitten,Golf Digest‘s architecture editor, and theDigesteditors do not mention how many ratings were counted for each course, yet in 2007 they broke out how each of the 100 Greatest scored in each rating category.
There’s a huge issuing percolating about how many raters had access to Augusta National, being that Augusta jumped back to No. 1 and some anecdotal evidence indicates raters had difficulty gaining access.
Still, why doesn’tDigest tell us that Rater No. 234 rated 30 courses in the last two years and 12 made it into 100 Greatest and 18 did not. Why not publish it on a pdf on the web?
Finally, do raters visit anonymously and pay their way, or do they phone ahead and identify themselves? Is there a Northeast bias becauseDigestis based here? Both of Winged Foot’s East and West course rank among The Hundred Greatest. That private club is most famous for two things: hosting U.S. Opens and its number of single-digit handicappers. Is a rater disqualified from ranking his/her course, where he/she is a dues paying member?
Some guys might play 30 top 250 courses every two years but, really, who are they and how many of them can do that? You’d have to have Warren Buffett’s travel budget and his G5 to make it to 20 of the 100 Greatest and 20 more not on the list that are under consideration. Who travels like that? A salesperson with a national territory…but would he/she have access to Cypress, ANGC, etc.?
Having said that, I’ll look at the list, count the seven or eight resort courses I’ve played, the five or six privates where I’vewrangledbeen extended an invite, and I’ll dream. It’s an abstraction all right, but a great distraction. — Robert Lohrer
